When we returned to Athir, we splurged on late night healing for Cojisto. My wounds were minor enough aside from the hole in my side, mostly bruises and scrapes, and I made due with potions. His were much more egregious. Even though he had taken some healing items early on in our trip to the city, I was surprised that he was still conscious when we arrived.

I stopped by the Tall Tree Tav to inform the night innkeeper that Ferrisdae and I would no longer be staying and to pay our tab for the nights we had spent there. After that, we returned to the Mage’s Tower.

While I certainly didn’t like staying in a place so heavily infested with magic that even I could feel it, we needed to be as close to Sophia as possible. Once the teleportation room was up in the morning, she would get us in as priority guests sent to Alashroe. That was the kingdom closest to the magic-starved desert.

Or rather, the once-was magic-starved desert. First a dungeon was created inside of it and now there was someone who could portal in. Justisius wasn’t a spellcaster but if magic worked then his rituals still should have. Then again, he might not have even tried to cast anything that wasn’t powered by an item.

Those were the only kinds that worked in the desert, but tended to die out incredibly fast. Spellcasters weren’t safe, either, as anyone with a wellspring or something similar found it emptying on its own over time. Any magic was sucked into the air and dissipated quickly after use like a mana sink covered the entire country. The only one who could afford to show off was the Sultan himself, and even he used magic sparingly when big political guests came to visit.

Sophia and Maribelle had turned in for the night, leaving Cojisto and I in the same room. It was an office with a pair of cots dragged in. Certainly worse than the tavern, but neither of us wanted to wait any longer than we had to.

Cojisto walked in fresh from using the facilities to clean up, and headed to his cot. I smelled the faint scent of lavender as he passed by. “Say what you will about mages, they have good showers,” he muttered halfheartedly. He had calmed down a lot on the trip back to the city, but it was never clearer than now that he was a man of action and waiting around didn’t suit him.

“Yeah. Magic is something else,” I agreed. I had already cleaned up and was sitting at a desk in the corner, writing my report on the incident.

“I hate waiting like this,” he complained as he threw himself onto the cot. The springs protested before he settled. “Life should be about doing, not waiting for things to happen. We should be waking people up, forcing them to teleport us to Alashroe so we can get there faster.”

“You’ve been to enough places to know that teleportation is a limited commodity, Cojisto,” I gently chided. “Today’s no different. Nobody has any casts left unless we start knocking on doors. We’re already forcing ourselves to the front of the line thanks to Sophia. Besides, we need to rest. It’s only a few hours.”

“Yeah, I guess,” he grunted. “A lot could happen in a few hours, though. We could go to Ferry’s family, see if any of them can get us there.”

I scowled, thinking about Durendrelle’s quick step through space when we met her. “Even though that thought did cross my mind, we’re not alerting the biggest family of adventurers in the country that the daughter of their head has been taken away. Not only is that a bad idea, but it would only get us there marginally faster.”

“Marginally faster is still faster.”

“I know, Cojisto.”

“I’m not a part of the DoD, I could go ask.”

“Don’t do that, Cojisto.”

“It probably wouldn’t even be hard. Knock on the door, introduce myself as a friend of Ferry-”

“Cojisto,” I snapped, turning around. “I understand. She could be there waiting there for us. Or she could be shoved through a completely different portal somewhere else. Or she could be dead. There’s no way of knowing, but jumping into something like this is suicide. This isn’t some dungeon adventure that you can saunter into, ingratiate yourself into a group, and come out with victory. This is the gods damned cult of CC. They’re not playing by the same rules and that means we need to be careful. For Ferrisdae’s sake.”

The man watched me silently for a few moments as if trying to figure out what he should say. “And Moose.”

I sighed. “Yes, and Moose. And Dalsarel, the Dark Elf that I assumed you punched unconscious. She’s a good kid that got caught up in all this, too.”

“But you’re really in this for Ferry, aren’t you?”

Turning around, I resumed work on my report. “Of course. Can you imagine the paperwork I’d have to do if something happened to her? Something else, I mean.”

Cojisto clicked his tongue. “Can you just say what you feel for once, man?”

Scowling, I didn’t turn around. Instead, I took a breath. “Yes, Cojisto. I am worried. Do you think I don’t want to rush right there? Because I do. But we don’t want to spook Abara, if the Blackwood Queen was using his name, into fleeing with her- them again. Right now, he probably thinks he’s safe to grieve the loss of an ally or friend or whatever they were. So long as they’re not already dead from a fit of rage, that gives us time.”

“And you really care about her?”

“Of course I do, Ferry’s the only rookie I’ve been able to tolerate so far. She’s met my family. There’s no one better.”

“Yeah. I think so, too,” Cojisto agreed, shifting on his cot. “I hope they’re okay.”

“They will be,” I replied firmly. “Because Abara and this whole cult won’t be ready for what comes next if they aren’t.”

For a while, the only sound was my pen on parchment. Such beautiful silence wasn’t meant to be.

“Moose and I went to all three places you wanted us to go, by the way,” Cojisto said suddenly. “I mean, of course we did; you found us in the last place. Just saying, if you want a report I can do that.”

“I’m almost done with this, then I’ll take your statement,” I responded.

“Sure.”

To his credit, Cojisto was quiet. Continually shifting in a noisy cot as expected, but he didn’t interrupt me any further. I knew myself well enough to realize that I was writing this report to keep myself busy and I was just as unwilling to go to sleep as he was. Finishing it up without the unnecessary details, I swapped out the parchment for a blank one and told the man I was ready.

“Okay, so, let’s start with the most simple one,” he said, retrieving the map I had given him from his bag. “The Emerald Sinkhole. That was the second dungeon you sent Moose and I to.”

“That’s right.”

“Nothing there,” he continued. “We went around it, inside of it, through it, everywhere. It’s a very pretty place and I can see why someone would want to make it their dungeon, but it was a rather boring adventure. Seven out of ten for prettiness, one out of ten for excitement.”

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I leveled him with a flat look. “You don’t have to grade them.”

“But you and Ferry have done that before,” he protested.

“Yes, and then we didn’t,” I told him. “If there was nothing at the Emerald Sinkhole, then I’m assuming there was something in the Leaf Blade Grove?”

“Yup,” Cojisto said with a nod. “We actually took a long time there because we kept getting lost. Or we thought we were lost, I guess.”

Frowning, I arched an eyebrow in confusion. “I would have assumed either you or Moose could read a map well enough to find a dungeon.”

The man huffed indignantly and crossed his arms. “We know how to use a map,” he defended. “It was the dungeon being tricky, not us being lost. Every time we went into it, we’d get turned around. Not physically, but like in our heads. We’d walk into it and both think, ‘oh, this couldn’t possibly be it, let’s try the next road.’ And then we did and we realized we overshot it and turned back around to try again.”

“And that took you… a long time?” I asked, using his own words.

“Well, yeah. Once we figured out that the dungeon was rejecting us, we started going around in a circle and marking trees and stuff.”

I held up my hand to slow him down. “What do you mean when you say it was rejecting you?”

“Oh, how did Moose say it…” he said, crossing his arms and looking down. “You know how the Dungeon Master’s overdungeon was weird? How it didn’t have the dungeon tingle?”

“It didn’t have a Dungeon Threshold Emotional Response, right,” I corrected.

“Right, the DTER thing,” Cojisto confirmed with a nod. “Usually it’s like a constant thing warning you to stay vigilant. If you don’t, you’re in danger. But Moose came to the conclusion that it had been altered somehow. Like how we didn’t feel it in the overdungeon, right? And that was by design. He thought someone designed it to make people turn around and go home or something.”

I found myself nodding as Cojisto relayed Moose’s explanation. “That makes sense,” I muttered before raising my voice. “It’s like I explained when I sent you off. When CC tried to take over the Department of Dungeons-”

“Hold on a moment!” he exclaimed, quickly sitting up in his cot. “CC tried to take over the DoD?”

“That’s classified information,” I said with a frown. It seems as though I was more frazzled than I thought. “I shouldn’t have said it, and don’t you dare repeat it.”

Cojisto mimed zipping his lips, but looked around the room. “I’m good, but what about the security of this place?”

“We’ll talk to Sophia about it in the morning,” I sighed. “Anyway, in a dungeon made by someone that I had to destroy, it was something similar. Instead of a… rejection feeling or whatever, it was one that made me wary of her. Then, after I finally attacked, it changed into a compulsion to bow and supplicate.”

“Did you?” he interrupted.

“No!” I spat, scowling. “I was conducting an interrogation that turned into a fight, there was no way I was going to give in to her.”

“How was the fight? Did you win? What happened?”

“We’re getting off track,” I said.

Cojisto blinked before smiling. “Sorry. You fighting CC is really exciting, you know?”

“I can see why you’d think that, sure,” I answered dryly. “The point I was trying to make is that this cult can clearly change the emotional response a DTER instills in people. The Leaf Blade Grove is out of the way, certainly, but the Elves have had over a century to rediscover it. If they entered and don’t realize they’re being sent away, that would explain why it hasn’t been found in all that time.”

“Yeah, that does make sense,” he agreed. Snapping his fingers, he pulled another piece of parchment out of his bag and handed it to me. “Moose said this might be important.”

Taking the parchment, I looked at the hastily scribbled rune he had drawn. It was one similar to that of the Red Thicket, but it had a different meaning. “Shift,” I mumbled as a shiver ran down my spine. “What is this?”

“We went into the Leaf Blade Grove,” he started.

“Which I told you not to do.”

“You did,” he acknowledged, unrepentant. “So we went into the Leaf Blade Grove. Once we got far enough in, everything was covered in this crystalline fungus stuff. Neither of us had any idea what it was, but from Moose’s back I noticed that it wasn’t growing in a specific pattern. I pointed that out because it was weird, and he had me draw it for you.”

I frowned. “And there was no boss or anything?”

“Not that we had seen,” he answered with a shrug. “There was a big pile of it near where Moose thought the center was, but no amount of punching or kicking or pickaxing made it move.”

“What happened to my instructions to be safe?” I scoffed.

“We were safe,” he said. “That’s all we found at the grove, though. We left that for the sinkhole, and then headed to the karst. Which is a really fun word to say. Karst.”

Holding back a sigh, I simply shook my head instead. “And then you made it to the Karst of Vile Spores.”

“You got it. We found that Dark Elf lady there, Dal… something.”

“Dalsarel.”

Cojisto nodded. “That’s right. She was there when we made it to the boss of the quarry. By far the toughest one there. But, you probably knew that. She was there with that wooden lady and a Gnome.”

I paused my writing. “A Gnome? You mean that shadow-clad figure?”

“I do. He was a Gnome before he cast whatever spell made him look like that. I think some kind of Blink variant? The one that makes them hard to hit. I hate those kinds.”

“The Blackwood Queen called the spellcaster Abara. Dorostreff said Abara, the Green Union rep here in Athir, was a Gnome. I think that, with all these plant-based diseases, parasites, fungus, and who knows what else has been popping up, someone hasn’t been taking their duties seriously.”

Snorting, Cojisto shook his head. “Badger, was that a joke?”

“Just an observation. Anyway, please continue.”

He nodded. “It looked like the Gnome — Abara — was conducting a ritual with Dalsarel in the center of it,” he continued. “There was already a dungeon in place with the usual tingle, so we knew it was there. He cast his spell while the wooden lady stood in a circle near the Dark Elf. I started getting all excited because I recognized her from your description and I wanted to take a crack at her, but Moose and I got separated in the fight.”

“Portals?”

“That’s pretty obvious,” he answered with a dark chuckle. “I was paired off with Dalsarel while Moose and the Nymph were taken across the river. Abara started cleaning up his ritual from top to bottom.”

“As in, completely?” I asked with a frown.

“Yeah, completely.”

“That’s strange to say the least, but if they thought they’d have to flee then he probably didn’t want to leave any traces behind. Just in case.”

“I’ve got nothing to say about that. Want me to keep going?” I nodded, and he did so. “Moose was having a lot more trouble than I was, but I think the Nymph was a lot stronger than Dalsarel. I really wanted to fight her with my best friend, but they mucked that up pretty well. Without a bunch of other Dark Elves around to help her, she went down after a minute or so of fighting. By then, Moose was on the ground.”

“Poisoned,” I said, and he nodded. “She tried to do the same to me when we first met. I would have thought that Moose would have a spell for something like that, though.”

“He does, but he didn’t have a chance to cast it,” Cojisto explained. “The Nymph seemed well versed in fighting healers and spellcasters. I mean, you’re supposed to target them first but it’s different when it’s Moose, you know?”

“Mmhmm,” I grunted as I resumed writing down his statement.

“Anyways, we fought. I got a few good licks in, but it…” the man sighed. “It was clear I didn’t have the upper hand. I have a long way to go before I’m the world’s greatest adventurer.”

“For what it’s worth, you’re pretty strong for your age,” I said. “Even if you don’t get the title, I think you can be proud of yourself.”

I heard him shift on the bed, and I lowered my head. “Okay, now I really know you’re worried,” he stated. “Ferry, I can understand, but now you’re praising me?”

“Don’t let it go to your head. It was a slip of the tongue,” I replied, rolling my eyes.

“You can tolerate me, too, can’t you?” he asked. I could hear the grin in his voice.

“Do you have anything else to add?” I scoffed.

“Nah, you were there for the rest.”

“Then go to sleep,” I said, not looking at him as I waved my hand in his general direction. “Once I’m done here I’m going to bed, too. We have an early start.”

“Whatever you said, Badger.”

I frowned as I heard Cojisto get comfortable in the cot. He was sound asleep not even two minutes later.

“Kids these days,” I muttered to myself.